Courting Death

by Paul Heald

  But such cases were few and far between. Mostly, he was just an instrument of the angry people of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. The worst thing was watching what it did to his chambers. Phillip was stressed out, and Arthur was coming unglued. What working on Gottlieb had begun, Jefferson had finished. Arthur had followed the rules of habeas corpus with precision, but obedience to the law provided no protection.

  He shut the book and laid it down. Reaching into his desk with a sigh, he pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled quickly. I need to go on some sort of a monastic retreat, he thought. No cigarettes or whiskey, just a lot of green vegetables and quiet time.

  * * *

  Arthur went straight to his office and buried himself in the pile of unfinished memos sitting on his desk. He skipped lunch and wrote steadily through the afternoon without so much as a coffee break. When he finished his second draft opinion of the day, he looked at his watch and realized he was about to work through the final regular rehearsal of the King David. He pushed his papers aside and bolted out the door, disposing of Melanie’s smile with a wave of his hand and an urgently whispered, “Rehearsal!”

  He jogged through downtown and across the river, arriving at the beginning of warm-ups out of breath and barely in time to participate in the limbering exercises that Professor Henderson always required of the chorus. The pain of stretching felt good to him—his neck was stiff, his back muscles were knotted, and his jaw was so tight that his ears popped whenever he moved it from side to side. When he finished massaging the neck of the girl next to him, he asked her to pound on his back as hard as she could. Her small fists barely dented the tension that sheathed his torso from his shoulder blades to the small of his back.

  At the beginning of the vocal warm-ups, Arthur proved the truth of Professor Henderson’s dictum that a tight body is not good instrument. His voice broke on the highest notes and went flat on the descending scales she asked the choir to sing. Eventually, he stopped singing entirely. He took a deep breath, leaned his head forward and rocked it from side to side, humming through the next few minutes of warm-ups until he built up some confidence that his voice would do what he wanted it to do. When he finally joined back in, the director nodded her head slightly in approval, rare acknowledgment that any particular individual existed apart from the group.

  The rehearsal consisted of singing through the entire work with the soloists, but without orchestral accompaniment. Henderson had so far concentrated on preparing each section of King David separately until they were individually polished to her satisfaction. That afternoon everything was put together. The next two nights would be dress rehearsals with the orchestra, and on Sunday night they would perform before a sold-out house.

  For the most part, Arthur sang raggedly. He was frequently behind the beat, late on his entrances and groping for the pitch whenever the tenor line wandered chromatically. The music spun like a school yard merry-go-round, and he was unable to grab on and ride with the rest of his friends. When the central motifs swelled to forte, he was left behind, unable to add anything substantial to the intensity of the sound. On occasion he joined the group fully for a couple of measures and felt the sense of wholeness at the center of the sound, but mostly he listened helplessly from the sidelines.

  To make matters worse, the biblical story of David told in the lyrics did little to help reconnect him to either the choir or to himself. David died the best-loved king in the muddy history of the early Hebrews, but along the way he took the crown from his best friend’s father, sent an innocent man to his death in order to screw his wife, and saw his son die leading an aborted coup d’état. Arthur had always found David to be a morally ambiguous character. Now, he looked upon him with disdain. Honneggar, who focused on the glories of David’s reign, was not nearly judgmental enough for Arthur.

  In spite of the uninspiring text, the music had remarkable power. It somehow transcended both the story of David and the tumult of the post-WWI period when it was composed. But as Arthur stood trying to join with the other tenors, he found himself on the wrong side of the divide, in the middle of history, standing outside the music.

  After, the marathon practice, Arthur slipped through a side door to seek the oblivion of the moonless night. As he stopped under an archway and let his eyes adjust to the dark, he heard someone behind him.

  “Do you have time for a drink tonight?” Kennedy touched his shoulder from behind. “There’s something I want to talk to about.”

  * * *

  Arthur sat down in a secluded booth at the back of the bar. Tuesday night was slow, a time for the management to experiment, as evidenced by the candle-topped wine bottles flickering on every table. Arthur pinched a burning wick between his thumb and forefinger and pushed the bottle to the side.

  “I’ve got a proposition for you,” Kennedy said hopefully. “I doubt it’ll seem too attractive compared to the other options you have, but let me give you the chance to say no.” He leaned both forearms on the table and gauged Arthur’s reaction. “The History Department made a job offer to a candidate with a law degree from the University of Michigan. Unfortunately, he waited two weeks to get back to us and then decided to blow off the teaching market altogether to take a law firm job that pays five times what we were offering. Of course, we went back to candidate number two, but while we were dicking around with candidate number one, he accepted a job at a college in his home state.

  “That leaves us in the shitter.” He gave his beer a disgusted look. “Clarkeston College sells itself as a great preprofessional school. The History Department attracts a lot of young people who want to go to law school after they graduate, but this year we taught no undergraduate legal reasoning or legal history courses, and because of this fuck-up, we may not be able to next year either.”

  Arthur sipped his beer and tried to focus on Kennedy’s problems instead of his own. “You want me to call my old profs and see if they know anybody who could do it?”

  “Not quite.” Kennedy paused a moment. “We were wondering if you might be interested in taking the job yourself for a year. It wouldn’t be a tenure-track appointment, but we pay our full-time instructors close to an assistant professor’s salary. You’d get no fringe benefits, but you’d really enjoy the experience.”

  He painted an attractive picture of academic life at a well-regarded small college, extolling the flexible hours, the friendliness of the students, and the close-knit character of the liberal arts faculty. “It’s a nice place to spend a year or two, and we can definitely offer something a law firm can’t—five weeks of vacation at Christmas!”

  The professor’s face was so earnest that Arthur hated to let him down, but anyone with the slightest understanding of law would understand why he was going to Washington. “In college, I used to dream of being a history teacher,” he explained, “but I just accepted a position with the Office of Legal Counsel starting this fall.”

  “Holy crap!” He filled up their glasses for a toast. “The main thing I remember about OLC is that it’s next to impossible to get a job there.”

  “The office basically gives legal advice to the executive branch of the government.” Arthur let Kennedy clink his glass. “It settles disputes between federal agencies, offers opinions on the legality of legislation, and generally deals with the president’s legal problems.”

  “Well, I’ll tell the committee that you turned us down to work for the president. They can’t blame me for that one!” Kennedy’s broad face beamed. “Is Suzanne going to move up to Washington with you?”

  “Unh, unh.” Arthur shifted uncomfortably in the booth. “I mean, no, she’s not. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, just the way you’ve talked about her.” He paused. “To tell you the truth, I figured a bit of romance would help us. Suzanne would entice you to stay for a year. Then, you’d fall in love with teaching, and maybe her, and get rooted in Clarkeston. If you did a good job with the classes, then I could convince the department to consider you for
a tenure-track position, and you could practice a little law on the side.” He looked genuinely surprised. “I guess I was off base with Suzanne.”

  Arthur shook his head and then looked down at the table. Kennedy was almost old enough to be his father, and he felt the urge to unburden himself, to share his secrets with someone who seemed to have life figured out. “No, you weren’t wrong. Suzanne and I were lovers, but I never asked her to come to Washington with me.” Arthur leaned his head back against the top of the hard wooden booth and stared vacantly at the faux Tiffany light fixture over the table.

  “I’ve totally fucked that up.” He set his beer mug down before it could slip out of his unsteady hands. “Suzanne is great … it’s hard to explain how amazing she is … but I spent Monday night having sex with Melanie Wilkerson.”

  Kennedy exhaled loudly. “Arthur, when you go to Washington, things are going to be a whole lot less interesting around here.” He leaned back and tried to rest his arm on the back of the booth, but the ledge was too high and it slid back down beside him. “I don’t know whether to ask how it happened or what it was like.”

  Arthur managed a faint smile. “I’d say gentlemen don’t tell, but that would be claiming to be gentleman.”

  “Does Suzanne know?”

  “No.” He responded emphatically. “And she’s not going to.” He fumbled a moment for the right words. “Suzanne is about the coolest person I’ve ever met in my life, and Maria is the first little kid I ever liked since … since I was a little kid. They can’t know any of this.”

  “What if Melanie told Suzanne? Such things can happen.”

  Arthur thought for a moment. “I don’t think she would. I don’t think she’s that kind of person. Besides, I’d tell Suzanne that she was lying.”

  “You’re pretty protective of Suzanne, given … uh … subsequent events with Melanie.” Kennedy looked at him quizzically. “Dude, what happened?”

  Arthur had no satisfactory answer. On the one hand, any single man would be crazy to turn down the chance to be with Melanie, but on the other hand, the world was full of attractive women and Arthur had never just hopped in bed with anyone before. He considered the possibility that Suzanne’s Sunday revelation was connected to his fling with Melanie. That’s what I’ll tell Kennedy, he thought bitterly, I’m fucking Melanie because I got Suzanne pregnant.

  Kennedy saw the look on Arthur’s face and withdrew the question. “I’m sorry to pry into your private life. I’m just worried, that’s all.”

  Arthur shrugged. He could not explain why he was behaving more like Titus Grover than the reliable Midwesterner who had arrived in Clarkeston eight months earlier. He pushed his beer away.

  “I don’t know, Ken.” He shook his head and frowned. “But feel free to worry. I’ve never been this big a shit before.”

  The need to visit the restroom provided a good excuse to drop the subject, and when Kennedy returned, they spoke for a while about the upcoming performance and parted with an awkwardness new to their friendship.

  As he left the bar, Arthur decided to walk the long way home alongside the river. He moved slowly, hands in his pockets, trying to prolong the distraction that movement brought to his restless mind.

  The night was cool but not brisk. Spring had taken firm enough root that when the temperature dropped at nightfall, the pungent breath of new growth buffered the air against the chill. The cry of crickets and tree frogs drove out the last vestiges of winter that lingered in the undergrowth. Arthur walked along the levy, following the moon’s reflection on the river until the lights of the bridge drove it from the surface of the inky water.

  At the crossing, his stomach cramped for a moment, and he rested one hand on the concrete railing. He felt a sharp pain and bent over briefly as it knocked the breath out of him. As he gathered himself, two cars roared past him in a mist of warm exhaust, and he moved quickly over the bridge to safer ground. Spooked by the close call, he did not stop walking until he got to Oak Street. He trudged the last five blocks, head down and clutching at his side.

  He did not look up until he reached the foot of the porch stairs, and when he did, he saw Suzanne bundled in a sweater, sipping a mug of something steamy and rocking gently on the porch swing in the cool night air.

  “Hey,” he said softly. He wanted to sit next to her, but the pain in his side redoubled and he collapsed instead on the top step where he could draw his legs up close to his chin.

  “Hey, yourself,” she replied. “Why don’t you sit up here with me? I don’t have cooties, you know.”

  “I’ve got some kind of a stomach cramp.”

  She silently slide off the swing and flicked a wet oak leaf off the edge of the porch. She sat next to him and gazed out over the street while he studied the paint job on the bottom step.

  “Another late night, huh?”

  “Nothing special. Kennedy offered to buy me a beer after rehearsal, which went on forever because we only have two left before the performance.” Arthur stole a side-long glance at Suzanne’s profile. He was unable to read her expression, and his stomach bent him over again. When the cramp subsided, he asked whether she had found a sitter for the performance.

  “Yeah. Judy’s going to come over. The girls can play, and they’ll have a good time.” She reached over and rubbed his back. “I called up Helen Stillwater today and asked her if she wanted to come. Her husband doesn’t want to go, so we’re going to sit together.”

  Arthur nodded.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” She squeezed his shoulder.

  “It’s just a stitch in my side from walking home.”

  He could feel her eyes upon him. He didn’t deserve her sympathy. He’d taken way too much from her already. He sat motionless, resisting the pulse of her sympathy, knowing eventually she would get up and leave.

  XXVIII.

  I’LL FLY AWAY

  Why, Melanie asked herself, do I always sit next to the screaming baby? Wedged in the window seat next to a young mother and a beet-red child, she stared out over the piedmont of the Carolinas and tried to concentrate on her visit to New York. The law firm interview would be easy. She knew what the Cravath attorneys wanted to hear, but the meeting with Jennifer Huffman would be more delicate. If the former clerk got suspicious, she would probably just clam up. A careful plan was called for, but images of Arthur in her bedroom kept interrupting her planning.

  She seldom just jumped into bed with a man. She wanted to make sure that he felt something for her first, that he was not going to run straight back to his friends and brag about screwing the beauty queen. Trust could be built up fairly quickly, but never after just a couple of beers in a sleazy bar. But then again, she had worked with Arthur for months and come to know him pretty well. There seemed little chance he would be shouting his conquest from the rooftops.

  Their lovemaking was best characterized as acrobatic and frantic rather than tender. It had been mutually desired and mutually fulfilling, but when it was over, she had lain exhausted and content, while he had been restless and, unless she had lost her ability to read people, touched by remorse—an emotion she had never seen a man exhibit in her bedroom before. She resolved to be wary. He would have to convince her that he wanted to be more than friends who had too much to drink one evening. Until then, she resolved to put off her own complex feelings about him.

  By the time she got to the law firm, she still had no clear idea for how to deal with Jennifer Huffman, and her interview schedule allowed little time for further reflection. She spoke with small groups of partners and associates from ten o’clock until noon and then had lunch with the hiring partner and the recruitment coordinator. All of her conversations went well, and she found herself considering the firm as a viable option if things did not work out in Washington. By the time her afternoon coffee date with Jennifer rolled around, her moral qualms about accepting the airplane ticket and occupying the attorney’s time had completely subsided.

  She was dropped off
at Jennifer’s office at two thirty, and the two made small talk while they walked to a café one half block from the firm.

  “Have we made a good impression on you?” Jennifer asked while they waited in line to order their drinks. She was a tall brunette with a slim figure, obviously dedicated to a careful diet or hours of aerobics a week, and probably both. Melanie had calculated she would be about twenty-eight, but she looked older.

  “Absolutely,” Melanie replied enthusiastically. “I had no idea you all had such an extensive pro bono program.”

  Jennifer mentioned other perks of working at the firm and ordered Melanie a coffee and herself a mineral water. They sat down in a private corner of an impressive walnut-paneled salon. “And the proximity of Café Bijou is a nice bonus too,” she explained when she saw Melanie admiring the space. “It originally opened in the late twenties and used to be quite the hang out for Russian ex-pats. It’s a great place to get out of the office for a few minutes.”

  “It’s fabulous. I love the chandeliers and all the wood.” Melanie beamed. “Was the coffee shop in the old bank building on College Avenue open when you were in Clarkeston?”

  “No, we had to go to that awful diner across from the courthouse.”

  “It’s not this nice, but the coffee is better than Ms. Stillwater’s brew.”

  “You mean she’s still there?” Jennifer managed to be surprised and disapproving at the same time. “How old is she? She’s must be a hundred.”

  “I don’t know exactly, probably more like seventy.”

  Melanie searched for the most seamless way to bring up the subject of Carolyn Bastaigne. “Do you ever miss Clarkeston? We Atlantans tend to look down on it a bit, but I’m kind of enjoying the place.”

  “Like I said on the phone, it was a rough year.” She took a sip from her glass of Perrier. “Judge Meyers was a disappointment. He’d faded quite a bit by the time I got there, serious memory issues, stuff like that. And you already know about Carolyn.” She waved a busboy over and asked for a lime. “I got out of Georgia as soon as I could and went straight to see my boyfriend in England. I ended up spending the whole summer there studying for the bar. Trust me, London is nicer than Clarkeston or New York.”